An extremist, not a fanatic

November 06, 2012

Nadine Dorries: some cognitive biases

Why has Nadine Dorries' decided to appear on I'm a Celebrity? She claims it's to get her message across to millions of people MPs can't reach. Others mention vanity and £40,000. In the long tradition of seeing what we want to see in any event, I suspect some cognitive biases are at work:

1. Neglect of base rates. Nadine isn't the first MP to apear on a reality show. Lembit Opik was on I'm a Celebrity two years ago.His career has not conspicuously thrived since. And George Galloway's appearance on CBB achieved the astonishing feat of making him look an even bigger arse than we thought. If Ms Dorries were a good Bayesian - and something makes me think she might not be - she'd attach a low prior probability to her chances of success. And two things mean she she's probably overweighting the posterior probability too...

2. Projection bias (pdf). People are bad at foreseeing their future tastes, exagerrating the degree to which they'll resemble their present tastes. I fear hope that Ms Dorries is doing this. She might now believe she can cope with having buckets of cockroaches tipped over her or having to eat kangaroo's bollocks. But when she actually has to do so, she might think otherwise.

3. Optimism bias. Even in the improbable event that Ms Dorries does a fantastic job in the jungle, does she really think this will come across? She seems to be forgetting that TV shows are edited. If she spends 95% of her time speaking eloquently on abortion and being a great team player and the other 5% whining and looking dog-rough, which 5% will be broadcast?

I suspect, therefore, that what we're seeing here is further corroboration that MPs are surprisingly bad at making judgments about probability.

I suspect that there will be little coverage of Ms Dorries's political views, let alone the laughable idea of something like "I'm a Celebrity" showing more than an out-of-context snippet of a logical argument. There will, however, be plenty of coverage of Ms Dorries's overweight posterior.

She may never go as now there is a rumour she has been kicked out of the Tory party? I expect the money will be too much of a lure to stop her going into the jungle. She will probably join UKIP if she has any credibility left after this.
Like many others I really want to watch her performance the bush tucker trials but am concerned that the money she generates through votes will go towards an anti-abortion charity, a cause I do not want give to.

I'm sure that by the time she flies back,
whatever she's done to embarrass herself in the jungle will be considerably *less* embarrassing than being one of the Conservative party faithful. Rats, sinking ship, and all that.

I suspect she's only doing it for attention. Which makes me think, it was bad enough when celebrities were using their status to acquire themselves influence in politics; it's gross when politicians - see also: Mensch, Opik and others - use their status to acquire themselves influences as celebs.

There's some rumours that she's done so much to annoy the leadership that she was facing deselection anyway.

So, what's her incentive to be an MP now? Will she get fired if she doesn't answer her constituents questions or turn up at parliament? No. So, doing something like I'm a Celebrity is probably quite a good move. Do that, then perhaps get an autobiography deal, maybe a writing gig doing some moral outrage for the papers.

In view of George Young's promptness in withdrawing the Tory whip, this looks like death by cop. The suspicion that she'd had enough has been around since her reckless "posh boys" jibe. Rather than jump, she has manoeuvred a push. Her choice of programme may indicate depths of ironic humour we had not previously credited her with.